DON’T PUSH YOUR KIDS TOO HARD

Dr.B.Spock on bringing up today’s children.

Find the answers to the questions:

1. Are children raised in single-parent homes more stressed than other kids?

2. How do working mothers affect kids?

3. Do parents harm kids by pushing them to achieve?

4. Dr. Spock, why are today’s children under stress?

5. Is watching television harmful to kids?

6. Are there specific things to avoid?

7. What kind of parents will today’s children make?

8. Do the new stresses on kids make them better equipped to deal with adult stresses?

9. Is it harder to be a parent today?

A. Partly because we’ve given up so many of the comforts and sources of security of the past, such as the extended family and the small, tightly knit community and the comfort and guidance that people used to get from religion.

B. It is stressful to children to have to cope with groups, with strangers, with people outside the family. That has emotional effects, and, if the deprivation of security is at all marked, it will have intellectual effects, too.

We know now that if there’s good day care it can substitute pretty well for parental care. But, though we’re the richest country the world has ever known, we have nowhere near the amount of subsidized day care we need. We’re harming our children emotionally and intellectually to the degree that they’re in substandard day care.

C. It’s not that a single parent can’t raise a child well but that it’s harder to raise a child in most cases with one parent than it is with two parents. The parents can comfort and consult and back up each other.

D. Our emphasis on fierce competition and getting ahead minimizes the importance of cooperation, helpfulness, kindness, lovingness. These latter qualities are the thing that we need much more than competitiveness. I’m bothered, for instance, at the way we coach young children in athletics and, even more ludicrous, the interest we focus on superkids. It hasn’t gone very far, but there are parents who, when they hear that other children are learning to read at the age of 2, think, “My God, we should be providing reading instruction, too,” without ever asking the most significant question: “Does it make the child a better reader or is there any other advantage to learning to read at 2 rather than waiting until age 6?” It imposes strains on children.

E. Absolutely no violence on television. Don’t give war toys. These are poisonous to children. This whole Rambo spirit is a distressing thing, especially in the most violent country in the world.

F. A lot of what they see brutalizes sexuality. In simpler societies, you don’t see people smashing each other in the face or killing each other. The average American child on reaching the age of 18 has watched 18,000 murders on TV. Yet we know that every time a child or an adult watches brutality, it desensitizes and brutalizes them to a slight degree. We have by far the highest crime rates in the world in such areas as murders within the family, rape, wife abuse, child abuse. And yet we’re turning out more children this way, with this horrible profusion of violence that children watch on TV. It’s a terrible thing.

G. No, human beings do make some adjustment to stresses, but that doesn’t mean that they’re doing better by being brought up with stresses. It’s going to make them more tense, more harsh, more intensely competitive and more greedy. I don’t think people can live by that. It is a spiritual malnutrition, just like a lack of vitamins or a lack of calories.

H. If they’re brought up with tension and harshness, then they’ll do the same with their children. Everybody acquires his attitude and behavior toward his children by how he was treated in his own childhood. What was done to you in childhood, you are given permission to do. To put it more positively, good parental standards are what make for a better society and poor parental standards are what make for a deteriorating society.

I. Yes. When I started pediatric practice in ’33, parents worried about polio and pneumonia. Now they have to worry about drugs and teenage pregnancy and nuclear annihilation.

NOTE: Text “Don’t push your kids too hard” may be used for the role game “Round table talk: On bringing up today’s children”.

LIVING OUT LOUD

Timothy Stevens has lived most of his life in a silent world. Until six months ago, he had never heard his mother’s voice, never listened to music and never heard the sound of birds singing or the laughter of his playmates.

#0- His mother, Sandra, knew that something was wrong with her baby son, because he did not have the same reactions as other babies. “If I didn’t look into Tim’s eyes, he didn’t seem to know I was there,” she says. When he was eight months old, Sandra took Timothy to the hospital and explained why she was worried. The doctors carried out hearing tests and decided that Timothy must be a little backward. #1-

Sandra insisted that the hospital should send Timothy to a specialist for more tests. Unfortunately, it was a long time before a specialist would see him. Finally, when he was almost two years old, Timothy and his mother went to a children’s hospital in Manchester where the staff had plenty of experience in dealing with deaf children.

#2- At last, someone believed her when she told them that her son was deaf. “Doctors often think that others worry too much about their children and that they always think the worst,” she smiles. “I knew I was right about Tim, but it took almost two years before the doctors would agree with me.” However, even Sandra had not imagined that Timothy’s condition could be as serious as it was.

#3- Doctors told Sandra that there was no chance that his hearing would ever improve. Sandra was shocked to learn that the only hope for Timothy was to have a bionic implant.

#4- The electrodes would send electric signals to his brain, which would allow him to hear them as sounds. The implant would not allow Timothy to hear perfectly, but it would be the only way for him to ever have a chance of overcoming his deafness. After checking that there was no serious risk involved, Sandra put Timothy’s name on the waiting list for the operation. Because he was so young, the doctors decided that Timothy should be given the implant as soon as possible.

#5- “I have to admit, I was very worried,” says Sandra, “but only hours after he came out of theatre, he was playing with the other children on the ward and I knew he was going to be fine! I couldn’t wait to find out whether or not the operation had been successful.” The moment of truth came on Timothy’s third birthday, when the doctors switched on the implant for the very first time. Timothy played with toys in the doctor’s surgery while a speech therapist played different sounds and checked his reactions. When Sandra said, “Hello Timothy,” and he looked into her eyes, she cried tears of happiness.

Timothy is now enjoying a life full of sound. #6- He is also attending the local nursery school where he likes nothing more than to make as much noise as possible as he plays with his friends.

Timothy celebrated his fourth birthday last week.

#7- “He is driving me mad with the noise he makes,” laughs Sandra, “and that’s something I never imagined I would complain about! For me, though, the greatest gift of all is to hear my son talking and to know that he can hear me when I speak to him.”

Find the right comment to each part of the text:

A – He has already learnt several words and phrases which allow him to communicate with his mother.

B - His presents included a variety of musical instruments which he loves to play with.

C - Sandra was relieved to find people who would listen to her.

D - A full examination showed that Timothy was completely deaf.

E - However, Sandra knew that the problem was more serious than that.

F - Timothy is only able to communicate by using sign language.

G - Three months before his third birthday, he went into hospital to have the operation that would change his life.

H - Timothy was born deaf.

I - This would mean having an operation to put a special receiver in Timothy’s head, with electrodes connected to the nerves in his ears.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1096